psychology

Waiting to Be Stolen

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

I’d like to discuss politics. I am going to take painful efforts to be nonpartisan, but let me say the issue I am going to discuss can happen to anyone, but is much more common in certain areas. I make no promises of sounding entirely neutral, but it is important I do so.

We all wonder “how can anyone believe this bullshit?” or “why do people follow someone obvious lying to them?” We’ve perhaps wondered it about ourselves at times. But how can it be in modern times, with all our knowledge of history and education, with the internet and all else, do we believe obvious lies?

Well there are many reasons, and this isn’t a discourse on propaganda. There are other experts for that. But one factor I think that’s missed is we’re more primed to be taken advantage of than we realize.

There’s an old Taoist saying I’ve heard in a few forms, but basically “You can lock your treasures in a chest until a thief strong enough to lift the chest comes by.” What you use for control can be taken from you.

Now think about the first time you saw people believe obvious lies. You wondered how they can believe such falsehoods. Consider that they may have been primed to believe by other people, who then got their marks snatched from them. Someone locked them in a chest of ideas and the right podcaster or politician just happened to pick it up

A lot of us are gathered together waiting to be stolen.

We’re primed to believe marketing. We’re awash in advertising, demographic targeting, and old fashioned techniques perfected by modern technology. People don’t just push your buttons, they’ve installed new ones. The right product or company can snatch you away if you’re not careful, and steal a swath of customers who think it was their idea.

We’re primed to believe politicians – at least our politicians, you know, the proper ones. We’ve got plenty of news organizations that are propaganda, intentionally or because it’s marketable, or both. Someone else who learns the right game can steal an electorate right out from under someone.

To add to all of this, we’re also in a time where everyone can be a propagandist and are encouraged to be. Reach out for your church! Get more hits to your blog! Get that meme circulating for likes! You, yes you might even get famous on social media and start a career as a grifting a-hole!

All of this is enabled by technologies we’ve never fully assessed – and I don’t just mean the internet. Have we really asked about what commercial television means for us? How we have to prepare for increasing information choices in the internet age? Just how disorienting is streaming?

We’re not just locked in treasure chests, we’re taught how to steal others using tools we had dropped in our laps. It also is so normal. We’ve become used to being marketed to, propagandaized, lied to, etc. that we accept it, miss it, and participate in it.

So no, it’s not surprising that someone you know or even you got deceived into following some awful person or cause. We’ve been primed by a lot of our culture and economy to be locked up, stolen away, and even help others steal the minds of others.

There, I managed to stay non-partisan enough. I hope enough not just to make you think, but maybe doubt yourself a little bit.

Steven Savage

The Blank Manifesto

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

My friend Serdar and I discussed the Poser Manifesto over at a delightful game blog. He got inspired and began typing away on his own manifesto. Inspired, I thought I too should put my thoughts together (not that it didn’t help that I just got a copy of Breton’s “Manifestos of Surrealism”)

So inspired I then thought about what I truly think as a writer and creative, ready to rant as I always do.

Nothing came. If you know me, NOT having something to say is pretty rare. I mean I don’t even have to have anything to say to spew a lot of words.

I wasn’t sure what to say, how to codify my beliefs. Perhaps it’s been a long day. Maybe I’m tired, but I could not articulate my own artistic vision.

This was pretty terrifying to say the least. It felt like the rug had been pulled out from underneath me mentally. Whats more, it was surprising as I’ve been and am pretty creative.

I am on a break with my writing, updating book covers and other projects, but I’m still writing here. Under pen names I experiment with art and zines. I’m always swapping ideas with fellow creatives. You think I’d have something to say, right?

It was terrifying and distracting. There was no rant, no manifesto, no vision in my head. I felt something was missing and I just noticed it.

Then I put the pieces together:

I’m taking a break from my regular writing here. Not surprising as I have “punctuations” in my writing – my career phase, my worldbuilding phase (which may indeed have run its course some 22 books later). I’m on hiatus to see what’s next.

I’m also experimenting in various communities with small press, mashup and surrealist art, and more. I’ve got “projects” but every project is about 50% experiment – it’s play.

I am in a creative transition.

A good manifesto usually needs some framework to put it in. Me, I’ve caught myself between spaces,and simply put I’m still building my new framework. I was the Geek Job Guru. Then I was Worldbuilding Guy. Even if a manifesto is not about a specific subject, it helps to come from a specific person and I’m not exactly specific right now.

I’m not missing something right now. There’s a space between, a space where something new can arrive, where someone new can arrive. I’m awaiting the next me.

He’ll doubtlessly write a manifesto.

Just thinking about it gets them one step closer to being born.

Steven Savage

The Cybertruck Tells Us What We Want

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

Yes, I’m going to blog on Elon Musk’s Cybertruck and how it teaches us what people want. Buckle up, but avoid a crash because the doors will probably stick.

Now if you expect me to praise Elon Musk or the Cybertruck, then you’re new here. The Cybertruck is an ugly mess, a renegade PS1 asset turned into an overdesigned and overhyped dysfunctional chunk of metal. Even if Elon Musk hadn’t worked hard the last few years to ruin his reputation, the Cybertruck would be a joke (and indeed it didn’t help his image). There’s a reason it’s so hated – and ironically the reason the Cybertruck is so hated is a lesson in what people actually want.

See, the Cybertruck, for all its flaws, is the realization of a vision.

It is a bad vision. It’s got an ugly retro-futuristic design with no appeal. Its control system sounds horribly inconvenient. The design makes visibility questionable, to the point I’m nervous to drive near one.. Even the unintentional flaws like the rusting or the dangerous hood, are things that seemed to be ignored in pursuit of the vision. That vision, apparently, is being a prop from a 1980s direct-to-video film.

But it is clearly a vision made by a person, there is an idea here.

Even if people had not, soured on Musk, the Cybertruck would still be the fulfillment of a vision. This truck is designed by someone with a plan, it is an expression of a human voice and human intent. Therefore because we know there is a person behind it, the dislike becomes personal, passionate. We get why it is the way it is and we don’t like it.

To hate something truly, is to have a personal connection to that hate. There’s someone and some decision to understand and dislike.

The hatred for the Cybertruck also tells us why we like things. A vision that speaks to us, that tells us about the intent and the creator and what it means, is one we can love. Through a book, a movie, or a vehicle, we can feel the intent, the human agency behind it. The love of something is also personal, because we know there is a person there and we get it.

Why we hate the Cybertruck is why we can love things – the human factor.

This is also why we really hate everything soulless, personality-less, from AI to corporate bureaucracy. There’s no one there, no one home, no moral actor. Even in hating something, knowing there’s someone there to hate is enlivening, dare I say, human. The Cybertruck may be awful, but it’s awful in a human way.

So before you entirely write off the Cybertruck, take it as a lesson. Not in hubris or questionable design decisions (since we’ve already had that lesson), but in why we hate and love things. It is a personal statement, and humans gravitate to those.

Even if just to complain.

Steven Savage